“Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (/ˈraɪnhoʊld ˈniːbʊər/; June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American theologian, ethicist, public intellectual, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Also known for authoring the Serenity Prayer,[1]

Niebuhr received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.[2]

Among his most influential books are Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man, the latter of which was written as the result of Niebuhr’s delivery of the Gifford Lectures. Niebuhr was also the brother of another prominent theologian and ethicist, H. Richard Niebuhr.[3] Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world, and created the theo-philosophical perspective known as Christian realism. He attacked utopianism as ineffectual for dealing with reality, writing in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944):

Niebuhr’s realism deepened after 1945 and led him to support the United States’ efforts to confront Soviet communism around the world. A powerful speaker, he was one of the “most influential religious leaders of the 1940s and 1950s in American public affairs.[4]

Niebuhr battled with religious liberals over what he called their naïve views of the contradictions of human nature and the optimism of the Social Gospel, and battled with the religious conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of scripture and their narrow definition of “true religion”. During this time he was viewed by many as the intellectual rival of John Dewey.[5] Niebuhr was also one of the founders of Americans for Democratic Action and spent time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.[6][7][8]

Niebuhr’s long-term contributions to political philosophy and political theology involve relating the Christian faith to “realism” in international relations and foreign affairs, away from idealism, and his contribution to modern just war thinking. His work has significantly influenced international relations theory, with political scientists such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz and Andrew Bacevich noting his influence on their thinking.[9][10][11]

Numerous politicians and activists such as former President Jimmy Carter,[12] Martin Luther King, Jr., Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, John McCain, and Eliot Spitzer have also noted his influence on their thinking.[11][13][14][15][16]

Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. described Niebuhr “the most influential American theologian of the 20th century”.[4][17] and Time Magazine posthumously called Niebuhr “the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards”.[18] Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Niebuhr’s work, in part because of President Barack Obama’s stated admiration for Niebuhr.[19][20][21][22] – snip

After seminary, he preached the Social Gospel, then started attacking what he considered the brutalization and insecurity of Ford workers.[31] Niebuhr had moved to the left and was troubled by the demoralizing effects of industrialism on workers. He became an outspoken critic of Henry Ford and allowed union organizers to use his pulpit to expound their message of workers’ rights. Niebuhr attacked poor conditions created by the assembly lines and erratic employment practices.[32]

Because of his opinion about factory work, Niebuhr rejected liberal optimism. He wrote in his diary:

We went through one of the big automobile factories to-day. . . . The foundry interested me particularly. The heat was terrific. The men seemed weary. Here manual labour is a drudgery and toil is slavery. The men cannot possibly find any satisfaction in their work. They simply work to make a living. Their sweat and their dull pain are part of the price paid for the fine cars we all run. And most of us run the cars without knowing what price is being paid for them. . . . We are all responsible. We all want the things which the factory produces and none of us is sensitive enough to care how much in human values the efficiency of the modern factory costs.”.[33]

The historian Ronald H. Stone thinks that Niebuhr never talked to the assembly line workers (many of his parishioners were skilled craftsmen) but projected feelings onto them after discussions with Rev. Samuel Marquis.[34] As some studies of assembly line workers have shown, the work may have been dull, but workers had complex motivations and could find ways to make meaning of their experiences; many boasted about their jobs and tried hard to place their sons on the assembly line. Ford tried but failed to control work habits.

After extensive sociological studies in which workers were interviewed, management concluded that the workers were more interested in controlling their home lives than their work lives. The Ford solution was welfare capitalism, paying relatively high wages with added benefits, such as vacations and retirement, that reduced turnover and appealed primarily to family men. Link and Link conclude that by tying half a man’s wages to the company’s profit, Ford managers offered “a highly successful wage incentive plan that simultaneously increased job satisfaction and raised the productivity of labor.”[35][36]

Niebuhr’s criticism of Ford and capitalism resonated with progressives and helped make him nationally prominent.[32] His serious commitment to Marxism developed after he moved to New York in 1928.[37]

In 1923, Niebuhr visited Europe to meet with intellectuals and theologians. The conditions he saw in Germany under the French occupation of the Rhineland dismayed him. They reinforced the pacifist views that he had adopted after World War I. – snip

During the 1930s, Niebuhr was a prominent leader of the militant faction of the Socialist Party of America, although he disliked die-hard Marxists. He described their beliefs as a religion and a thin one at that.[47] In 1941, he cofounded the Union for Democratic Action, a group with a strongly militarily interventionist, internationalist foreign policy and a pro-union, liberal domestic policy. He was the group’s president until it transformed into the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947.[48] – snip

Within the framework of Christian Realism, Niebuhr became a supporter of American action in World War II, anti-communism, and the development of nuclear weapons. However, he opposed the Vietnam War.[49][50]

At the outbreak of World War II, the pacifist component of his liberalism was challenged. Niebuhr began to distance himself from the pacifism of his more liberal colleagues and became a staunch advocate for the war. Niebuhr soon left the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a peace-oriented group of theologians and ministers, and became one of their harshest critics.

This departure from his peers evolved into a movement known as Christian Realism. Niebuhr is widely considered to have been its primary advocate.[51] Niebuhr supported the Allies during World War II and argued for the engagement of the United States in the war. As a writer popular in both the secular and the religious arena and a professor at the Union Theological Seminary, he was very influential both in the United States and abroad. While many clergy proclaimed themselves pacifists because of their World War I experiences, Niebuhr declared that a victory by Germany and Japan would threaten Christianity. He renounced his socialist connections and beliefs and resigned from the pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. He based his arguments on the Protestant beliefs that sin is part of the world, that justice must take precedence over love, and that pacifism is a symbolic portrayal of absolute love but cannot prevent sin. Although his opponents did not portray him favorably, Niebuhr’s exchanges with them on the issue helped him mature intellectually.[52]

Niebuhr debated Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of The Christian Century magazine, about America’s entry into World War II. Morrison and his pacifistic followers maintained that America’s role should be strictly neutral and part of a negotiated peace only, while Niebuhr claimed himself to be a realist, who opposed the use of political power to attain moral ends. Morrison and his followers strongly supported the movement to outlaw war that began after World War I and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The pact was severely challenged by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931.

With his publication of Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), Niebuhr broke ranks with The Christian Century and supported interventionism and power politics. He supported the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and published his own magazine, Christianity and Crisis.[53] In 1945, however, Niebuhr charged that use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was “morally indefensible”.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.[54] explained Niebuhr’s influence:

Traditionally, the idea of the frailty of man led to the demand for obedience to ordained authority. But Niebuhr rejected that ancient conservative argument. Ordained authority, he showed, is all the more subject to the temptations of self-interest, self-deception and self-righteousness. Power must be balanced by power. He persuaded me and many of my contemporaries that original sin provides a far stronger foundation for freedom and self-government than illusions about human perfectibility. Niebuhr’s analysis was grounded in the Christianity of Augustine and Calvin, but he had, nonetheless, a special affinity with secular circles. His warnings against utopianism, messianism and perfectionism strike a chord today….We cannot play the role of God to history, and we must strive as best we can to attain decency, clarity and proximate justice in an ambiguous world.[55]

Niebuhr’s defense of Roosevelt made him popular among liberals, as the historian Morton White noted:

The contemporary liberal’s fascination with Niebuhr, I suggest, comes less from Niebuhr’s dark theory of human nature and more from his actual political pronouncements, from the fact that he is a shrewd, courageous, and right-minded man on many political questions. Those who applaud his politics are too liable to turn then to his theory of human nature and praise it as the philosophical instrument of Niebuhr’s political agreement with themselves. But very few of those whom I have called “atheists for Niebuhr” follow this inverted logic to its conclusion: they don’t move from praise of Niebuhr’s theory of human nature to praise of its theological ground. We may admire them for drawing the line somewhere, but certainly not for their consistency.[56]

After Joseph Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Adolf Hitler in August 1939, Niebuhr severed his past ties with any fellow-traveler organization having any known Communist leanings. In 1947, Niebuhr helped found the liberal Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). His ideas influenced George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and other realists during the Cold War on the need to contain Communist expansion.

In his last cover story for Time magazine (March 1948), Whittaker Chambers said of Niebuhr:

Most U.S. liberals think of Niebuhr as a solid socialist who has some obscure connection with Union Theological Seminary that does not interfere with his political work. Unlike most clergymen in politics, Dr. Niebuhr is a pragmatist. Says James Loeb, secretary of Americans for Democratic Action: “Most so-called liberals are idealists. They let their hearts run away with their heads. Niebuhr never does. For example, he has always been the leading liberal opponent of pacifism. In that period before we got into the war when pacifism was popular, he held out against it steadfastly.” He is also an opponent of Marxism.[57]

In the 1950s, Niebuhr described Senator Joseph McCarthy as a force of evil, not so much for attacking civil liberties, as for being ineffective in rooting out Communists and their sympathizers.[58] In 1953 he supported the execution of the Rosenbergs, saying, “Traitors are never ordinary criminals and the Rosenbergs are quite obviously fiercely loyal Communists…. Stealing atomic secrets is an unprecedented crime”.[58] – wiki

Skippy… out of all the things I could pick out I’ll just point to one he was a proponent of:

*Just war theory* (or Bellum iustum) is a doctrine of military ethics of Roman philosophical and Catholic origin,[1][2] studied by moral theologians, ethicists and international policy makers, which holds that a violent conflict ought to meet philosophical, religious or political criteria. – wiki

And highlight:

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in Niebuhr’s work, in part because of President Barack Obama’s stated admiration for Niebuhr.[19][20][21][22]

Firstly the post debunked the ideal of him being a Marxist (communist is another kettle of fish and not applicable) and more correctly defined him as a democratic socialist, yet he did not dismiss Marx in totality, just the state – man thingy, but, such is the quandary of the beautification of the deceased.

Now on to some more interesting observations ie:

“Third, I opposed communism’s political totalitarianism. In communism the in- dividual ends up in subjection to the state. True, the Marxist would argue that the state is an “interim” reality which is to be eliminated when the classless society emerges; but the state is the end while it lasts, and man only a means to that end. And if any man’s so-called rights or liberties stand in the way of that end, they are simply swept aside. His liberties of expression, his freedom to vote, his freedom to listen to what news he likes or to choose his books are all restricted. Man be-comes hardly more, in communism, than a depersonalized cog in the turning wheel of the state.
This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me.

I am con- vinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as a means to the end of the state, but always as an end within himself.

Yet, in spite of the fact that my response to communism was and is negative, and I considered it basically evil, there were points at which I found it challenging.” – MLK

Me here… He is opposed Communism’s Political Totalitarianism (the state: an assemblage of persons will expressed) yet is OK with a Totalitarian Religious Creator Myth that is a polyglot of past Myths (an ambiguous belief)… colour me confused.

Now this opine of totality:

“I am con- vinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God.” – MLK

and

“The late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, referred to communism as a Christian heresy. By this he meant that communism had laid hold of certain truths which are essential parts of the Christian view of things, but that it had bound up with them concepts and practices which no Christian could ever accept or profess.6″ – MLK

Me here… The proclamation “man is an end because he is a child of God” is unfounded and asserted with out any evidence save he said so – I believe. Further more he creates the ultimate axiom by which to anchor his entire ethos… and people talk about Bernard… shezzz.

Now we have the Archbishop of Canterbury claiming “communism as a Christian heresy” as retold by MLK. What a thingy, to claim certain ethical – moral values as historically – owned – just by breathing it when others have made the same observation through out antiquity.

Although MLK did say:

“But in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me ever more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism had greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distri-bution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system: capitalism is always in danger of inspiring” – MLK

Me here… So he’s not completely at odds with wealth distribution issues, yet fails to understand the actual history and mechanisms… cough *complexity* he employs against Marx ie:

“Obviously this theory left out of account the numerous and significant complexities-political, economic, moral, religious, and psychological-which played a vital role in shaping the constellation of in-stitutions and ideas known today as Western civilization. Moreover, it was dated in the sense that the capitalism Marx wrote about bore only a partial resemblance to the capitalism we know in this country today.” – MLK

As I have stated in comment below:

“In the Communist Manifesto there is a bit of prophesy that turned out not to be accurate. There are owners of the means of production and then there are workers. The middle class was supposed to disappear into one of these two categories. History took a different path in the 20th century, especially in America.

Camus writes about how Marx could not have anticipated investment by the middle class in publicly owned corporations. This allowed a greater number of people to prosper, financially, as partial owners of the means of production.” – skip

Cough jr. partial owners voting rights to property – assets, which are being looted – removed – lawfully – as we breath and transferred increasingly – exponentially to the *owners* of capital and for quite dubious reasons… personal freedom maybe?

Skippy… Disclaimer not into ism and ologys of antiquity nor the beautification of the dead nor the exaggerated opines of persons which were un-willfully ignorant… the data is still coming in… sigh.

The situation we face now is not one where the government has captured the banks, but one where the banks have captured the government.

]]>By: from Mexicohttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106856
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:14:55 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106856Martin Luther King “claimed to be a Marxist”?

Do tell.

That’s almost as big a whopper as the one jsmith told above, that Reinhold Niebuhr was “a former Marxist who also misread Marx and was the philosophical godfather of the neoliberal movement.”

And to come to this conclusion Patel was forced into some serious cherry picking of what King had written.

But again, all this goes back to what King said about Marxism, that “almost anything — force, violence, murder, lying — is a justifiable means to the ‘millennial’ end.” They play fast and loose with the truth.

If Patel were to want to give an accurate picture of King’s take on Marxism, why would he ignore the very paper where King laid out in great detail his beliefs regarding Marx?

]]>By: jonboinARhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106829
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:46:32 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106829Above meant to reply to Paul Niemi.
]]>By: jonboinARhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106826
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:45:29 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106826I’m not academically rigorous in any way, nor particularly well read, but I’m thinking, in my impressionistic (somewhat fuzzy) way of percieving things, that the US military/state as it projects power around the world has most often been quite successful at advancing US the interests of the US financial and big business class.
]]>By: LucyLuluhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106690
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:42:22 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106690This Walter Investments is a real sweetheart firm, NOT! I’m not sure where OP’s Bank of America reference came from, but Walter Inv. have 1 million accounts with an unpaid balance of $78 billion, based out of Tampa (the crooks love FL, very friendly state for bankruptcy), specializing in mortgage servicing rights on “high-touch” (distressed) loans. They acquired Green Tree in 2011, and ResCap/Ally’s GSE business in 2012, and have some kind of tie-in with MetLife (didn’t read that far). They also recently acquired a couple reverse mortgage businesses out of TX and CA.

Take a look at the “complementary services” they will offer:

• Asset Receivables Management: performs collections of delinquent balances on loans serviced for third-parties after they have been charged off.

• Insurance Agency: acts as a nationwide agent of primarily property and casualty insurance products for both lender-placed and voluntary insurance coverage. (in that order, no doubt)

• Loan Originations: facilitates refinancings as a retention and recapture solution for loans we service.

They tout that they follow all regulations which offer them an advantage over their competitors! So how do they they deal with missing/nonexistent paperwork?

]]>By: skippyhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106656
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:54:56 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106656@Paul… what ethics and morality do you speak of?
]]>By: Paul Niemihttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106641
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 08:38:13 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106641If my views coincide with Liberal Internationalism, then I am comfortable with that, and I especially like having ethics and morality as features of my adopted approach to foreign policy. Perhaps you believe, as indicated above, that what is Realpolitik is the real thing, and I hope you don’t quote Richard Nixon to me next, but in our post-modern perspective I believe we are seeing the big banks used more and more as instruments of Realpolitik, for their ability to move money internationally and for their opacity. This could help to explain the special status given to them and why their bad behaviors are tolerated.
]]>By: nonclassicalhttp://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/big-bank-welfare-queens-unprofitable-without-government-subsidies-so-why-dont-we-regulate-them-like-utilities.html#comment-1106546
Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:03:07 +0000http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/?p=38881#comment-1106546…likely because the bushitter DEregulated “Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1930’s” too…Puget Sound Electricity sold off by 5 man bushit “investigative commission”:

…makes it appear WASHINGTON STATE “regulators” approved sale-COMPLETE LIE…”state regulators” were 5 man commission sent from D.C. to DEregulate..
I personally spoke with State Senator Kilmer-who told me in no uncertain terms, Washington State legislators were told to say nothing-stay completely away from commission efforts-findings..